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COMMENTARY / World
Apr 17, 2014

Confronting unending lies

Perhaps what is most amazing and regretful about the situation in Russia is the nearly complete absence of truth and objectivity in the mass media covering Ukrainian events.
Japan Times
WORLD
Apr 12, 2014

Gloves off as India's BJP woos Hindu vote

India's main opposition party, tipped to form the next government, appears to be returning to its Hindu nationalist roots at the start of a five-week general election, raking up divisive issues and using strong language in an area hit by religious riots.
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics / FOCUS
Apr 10, 2014

In Iran, many of 1979 U.S. hostage takers mellow, now favor evolution to revolution

Three decades after hard-line students occupied the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took diplomats hostage for 444 days, many of the now middle-aged revolutionaries are among the most vocal critics of Iran's conservative establishment, officials and analysts said.
COMMUNITY / Voices
Apr 9, 2014

Post-Fukushima reform throws up a few surprises

The magnitude-9 earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan on March 11, 2011, devastated the northeast, killing more than 15,000 people and causing level 7 meltdowns at three reactors at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. Observers believed the sheer size of the catastrophe and its subsequent effects...
EDITORIALS
Apr 7, 2014

Taiwan's 'sunflowers' bloom

A student-led occupation of the Taiwanese government's legislature to protest a cross-strait trade agreement — which is the centerpiece of President Ma Ying-jeou's political and economic agenda — enters its third week.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 7, 2014

Pope and Xi Jinping should be sharing notes

Chinese President Xi Jinping and Pope Francis would seem like natural enemies. Yet, these world leaders should really be sharing notes as their tasks of late are surprisingly similar.
JAPAN
Apr 6, 2014

Bumpy road ahead to Aussie FTA

Australian Trade Minister Andrew Robb said substantive issues remained in trade negotiations with Japan as the two nations rushed to conclude a free trade agreement before their prime ministers meet on Monday.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 6, 2014

Don't let Cold War warriors reboot their dated thinking

The hundred think tanks that bloomed, and the thousands of mediocre academics and pseudo-experts who found easy employment in the universities and the media, feel obliged to make themselves relevant and important again after Russian President Vladimir Putin's land grab. Don't let them reboot the Cold War.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / YEN FOR LIVING
Apr 5, 2014

Some local governments think health checkups save money, and some don't

Conventional wisdom says when it comes to health care you have to spend money to save it.
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC
Apr 5, 2014

North Korea envoy tells world 'wait and see' on new nuclear test

North Korea said Friday that the world will have to "wait and see" when asked for details of "a new form" of nuclear test it threatened to carry out after the United Nations Security Council condemned Pyongyang's recent ballistic missile launch.
COMMENTARY
Apr 4, 2014

Wary West caught off guard by Putin's wild ways

At this point, the West has no idea what Russia is willing to do to restore its influence, but Russia knows exactly what the West will — and, more important, will not — do. This has created a dangerous asymmetry.
BASKETBALL / ONE-ON-ONE WITH ...
Apr 2, 2014

Big Bull Peppers proud to be underdog

The Japan Times features periodic interviews with players in the bj-league. Josh Peppers of the Iwate Big Bulls is the subject of this week's profile.
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC
Apr 1, 2014

Brutal crackdown on China chemical plant protests stokes anger

Protests against a proposed chemical plant in southern China spread to the provincial capital of Guangzhou on Tuesday, even as authorities signaled they may back down on their construction plans in an attempt to head off more unrest.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 1, 2014

The cost of corporate kowtowing to Beijing

American general interest family magazine, Reader's Digest, is alleged to have censored stories for its worldwide English edition to maintain a cheap printing deal in China.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 1, 2014

The Affordable Care Act isn't Obama's 'Iraq'

The new signup numbers — 6 million and counting — on the U.S. Affordable Care Act exchanges make it clear that the roll-out of the bungled federal website didn't destroy the law and probably didn't cost President Barack Obama much in lasting public opinion.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE FOREIGN ELEMENT
Mar 31, 2014

The Fukushima disaster: Three years on, who's fooling whom?

Japan's new Basic Energy Plan sees nuclear power as an important base load energy source. But whatever 'base load' means politically, the public is lulled — fooled — into a sense that, despite Fukushima, nuclear will remain a logistically viable long-term option.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 28, 2014

How Spain can avoid a nasty split like Crimea

There is no case for forcibly keeping territories under a country's rule if the majority doesn't want it.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / TELLING LIVES
Mar 28, 2014

TV personality Haruka Christine wants youth to get politically savvy

Regular viewers of Japanese TV may remember young Haruka Christine's first appearances on the variety-show circuit in early 2010, when she had her fellow entertainers and audiences in stitches.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 27, 2014

'Shirayuki Hime Satsujin Jiken (The Snow White Murder Case)'

The Japanese are big fans of mysteries of the puzzle-plot sort, with murders committed in the kinds of odd and ingenious ways that real killers seldom use. The detective hero not only cracks the case, but delivers a detailed postmortem to an appreciative audience, somewhat like a chess master analyzing...
EDITORIALS
Mar 27, 2014

Transparency in interrogations

A special panel of the Legislative Council proposes phasing in the process of electronically recording the full interrogation of a criminal suspect by an investigator. Will prosecutors go along?
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Mar 26, 2014

Chasing a Phantom of success

Based on "Le Fantôme de l'Opéra," a 1911 novel by the French author of detective fiction, Gaston Leroux, and transformed into a musical composed, co-written and produced by Englishman Andrew Lloyd Webber (now Baron Lloyd-Webber), "The Phantom of the Opera" was first produced in London in 1986 and went...
Reader Mail
Mar 26, 2014

A sideshow to the main events

I have written before that I think the Olympic Games are a sideshow to the world championships for each event. The world championships, not the Olympics, by definition are where we see the best. Jack Gallagher thinks otherwise in his March 19 column "Worlds better held before Olympics as a qualifier."...
Japan Times
Figure Skating / ICE TIME
Mar 25, 2014

Time for ISU, Cinquanta to answer for sham in Sochi

Good news arrived on Friday with the announcement that the Korean Olympic Committee and Korean Skating Union will file a formal complaint about the judging in the women's free skate at the Sochi Games last month which saw defending Olympic champion Yuna Kim robbed of a second gold medal.
Japan Times
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Mar 24, 2014

Selective consumption tax breaks inch closer

The consumption tax is going up to 8 percent next Tuesday, but consumers also have to brace for a another hike in October 2015, when the Abe administration plans to raise it all the way to 10 percent — double what it has been since 1997.

Longform

Japan's growing ranks of centenarians are redefining what it means to live in a super-aging society.
What comes after 100?